The Chinese historically have had a steady grasp on the usage of soft power. In an interview with the HPR, Professor Joseph Nye, the foremost scholar on smart power, stated that China’s “basic aim is to combine hard and soft power. 

Actor Zhang Yicheng and actress Kong Yan perform in the drama "Amber", directed by Chinese director Meng Jinghui, at Thalia Theater, in Hamburg, Germany,on Jan 29, 2015.

U.S. President Barack Obama will appear in public at an event attended by the Dalai Lama in Washington in the coming week, the White House said Friday, a move sure to anger Beijing.

China watchers have been combing through the details of the new initiatives and proposals Xi has recently introduced, such as “One Belt, One Road” (1B1R) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Even though these new initiatives are still under construction, the fact is that this has been the biggest foreign policy shift in Beijing since 1989. The bigger question here is, what is the grand strategy behind Xi’s plans?

Japan is stepping up a campaign to promote a “correct understanding” of its wartime past, in a move that may anger China and South Korea ahead of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in August. 

The BBC warned the UK government in its Future of News report that it might soon be unable to compete with state-supported foreign rivals, including Russia’s RT, China's CCTV and Qatar's Al-Jazeera, in terms of global news presence, if its huge budget cuts are not reversed.

China has dramatically scaled up its global loan book over the past five years by dealing with countries largely ignored by Western lenders, whether for political reasons (Russia) or economic (Argentina). 

In the Japanese government’s new budget, one small item stands out: a $5 million grant to Columbia University in New York to fund a position for a professor of Japanese politics and foreign policy.